Remember me saying that day one was not the hardest…there’s no one day that was. Maybe there were climbs that will be forever seared onto my memory forever because of how hard they were. Day three had one of them. The day started in relative luxury though, from our lovely chalet just outside of Briançon. After another bike packing breakfast of bars and chocolate brioche we steadily made our way towards Col d’Izoard.

It’s worth noting here that the Torino Nice Rally is not one set route, you have options.

We had opted not to do the road climb, so headed into the sleepy town of Cervieres which led us through a beautiful valley to a refuge in Les Fonds and some fellow TNR riders who were'n’t put off by a bit of hike a bike. By ‘bit of hike a bike’ I mean 5km of loose, rocky, steep hiking trail way up to the summit of Col de Péas. It was hard work for the final 2km, when the loose gravel got deeper, the terrain was even steeper and it was peppered with big rocks you had no choice buy to lift your wheels up onto. My arms were toast.

The final few hundred meters we had a dog escort us to the top, closely followed by its owner who must have thought we were completely insane.
Next was one of the standout descents of the trip. It started as single track, with super tight hairpins. We had to take a moment as my chain kept coming off my jockey wheel - turned out my rear hangar had developed a serious wobble.

Once that was patched up (thanks Tim) the trail opened out to a wider track with more steep, swooping switchbacks before sending us through a forest and depositing us in the town of Château Queyras. It was fast, flowy and technical - I loved every minute.

We had a great pizza and had our first proper encounter with the Three Amigos (Andy, Laurens and Matt). We’d keep bumping into these guys throughout the trip and even meet for drinks after to start planning our own off-road riding festival in Amsterdam…maybe.

After pizza we had to head towards the next climb, one which I will remember in detail forever, Col d’Agnel. At 2,744 m it is the thirds highest mountain pass in the Alps, and from pizza it was 20.5km with an average gradient of 6.5%. That doesn’t sound too bad, but it ramps up at the end and is 100% tarmac, nooooooooo!

It was hard work. The beginning saw us bunch up with some other riders and happily chat as we chipped away at the easy start. I can’t deny that the view was beautiful, but as a headwind kicked in, and so did the gradient, we got quieter. It went on forever, I had plenty of brain space to notice how slow I was going, how far the peak was, how long it would take to get there. All the kind of thoughts that don’t enter my head when I’m off road, because I’m busy having a ball.

We finally made it! There was a number of riders who had stopped at the top for a while and I was grateful to have lots of happy faces to chat to at the top. Tim was outed as a bike mechanic and helped Laurens with his bottom bracket, which was a reminder that zip ties are amazing. As we regrouped, clouds headed for us so we did the next descent with lights on and taking it easy. It wasn’t a shame though, the next few kilometres were atmospheric and it added a new flavour to the ride.

We stopped halfway down to see other riders through and for Tim to get some shots of them. After that it was plain sailing (more downhill) to the town of Sampeyre where we had a room booked in a very Wes Anderson-esque hotel. There was a thunder and lightning storm that night, no regrets about sacking off the bivvies for a night again.